Merry Christmas!

メリー　クリシマス

Mehri Kurisumasu!

Form Guide

As you'll have seen if you subscribe to the StoneWater RSS feed - or have visited the site from today on - the SWZ board have released the final version of the Form Guide (you can find it at the link at the bottom of this article). This has been produced mainly by John Suigen Kenworthy supervised by Keizan Sensei with input from Tenshin Roshi and others at Yokoji ZMC.  So it's as definitive as something like this could ever be!

Form (the ritual elements of Zen practice) is one of the aspects of Zen practice that sometimes surprises people new to Zen.  There's a story told by Kapleau Roshi that he was with a companion visiting a monastery in Japan.  The Roshi greeted them and lead them into the Buddha hall, where they were surprised by being asked to bow & office incense at an altar.

"Why would we do that?  Didn't the ancestors spit on statues or burn them for firewood back in the day?" asked Kapleau's companion (though prob not in those words!).

"You can spit," replied the abbot.  "I choose to bow."

We often feel more comfortable with the iconoclasm of Zen than its traditions... which is odd, because iconoclasm is supposed to be challenging and unsettling.  Instead, we're challenged by tradition, by the inverse of iconoclasm.  Perhaps it needs a name - "icon-servation" or something!

Anyway...

Over the next weeks & months we'll try to ensure that we stick to the form as laid down in this guide.  Where individual circumstances mean we can't practically follow a certain instruction, we'll do our own thing of course... but there's value in surrendering our own fixed views about what's right to do.

Form Guide:
http://www.stonewaterzen.org/uploads/images/Form%20Guide.pdf

Xmas & New Year closing

Just a quick note to confirm that the last zazen of 2012 will be on 17 December.  The following two Mondays are Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so we'll not meet then.

2013 will start with zazen as regular on Monday 7th January, when we'll start looking at The Platform Sutra properly.

What are you doing for Rohatsu?

There's really only one 'high day' that has been imported from Japanese Buddhism into Western Zen - rohatsu.  Though the name simply indicates "8th December", rohatsu is the most high-profile observance on the zazenka's calendar: the anniversary of the enlightenment of the Buddha.

In the Lake District, a rohatsu retreat is about to start that will culminate on the weekend of rohatsu, and this pattern is echoed all over the world in Zen centres everywhere.  For those who can't manage a week off at this time of year, how do they mark this occasion?

In Liverpool, I'm running an all-night sit to follow the regular Saturday zazenkai (this year on rohatsu itself), and I hope a few hardy folk will join me for that.  It's not as tough as it sounds, we sit in shifts and do some sleeping too!

What might you do?

Platform sutra

So we were supposed to start on the Platform Sutra this week, but yours truly left the materials at home... fantastic.  Probably best given the number of first-time attendees - both the biggest number of new folk on one day and I think a record number of bums on seats, too, with a total of 8 sitting.  Not that anyone's counting!

A couple of resources then, for your entertainment & delectation, before we get going on this sutra for next week:

• The Wikipedia entry on the Platform Sutra... like I tell my undergrad students, we all know that we all read wikipedia, we just never admit it officially...
• An article I wrote on Huineng / Daikan Eno back in August 2010.  Gives some background, a critical perspective and some links.
• One translation of the sutra itself (there are a few).

Let's hope I remember the text & my notes this week...

Northampton's Resident Monk(ey Mind)

So - the move is made, the family & the furniture arrived and are safely installed (if not yet entirely unpacked).  Now if I can only figure out how to get from my new home to the Friends Meeting House...

This weekend, I was back up in Liverpool (odd given I'd only just moved away from Liverpool!) for the 10th Anniversary of StoneWater.  A good time was had by all, and Keizan Sensei spoke movingly of how it was the people that make the group, and that the Anniversary event's main aim was to say thank you.

The same holds true even for a wee provincial, teacher-less group like ours, too, of course - so while I'm thinking about it, thanks to everyone who's come through the door at zeNN1, hard-core regulars (!!) or even those who have only popped in once.  It's the bodies on the cushions that make a zen group.

Possible cancellation Monday 12th Nov...

...but watch this space.  Basically this is because I'm expecting the movers that day, and things may well be a tad hectic at the new Chez Gordon-Finlayson.

Otherwise, things continue on steadily!